Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Background & Significance: So the first thing I'm obligated to say is that "The Planet of the Spiders" is a regeneration story. Yes. It's the final story starring Jon Pertwee as The Doctor and in the end of this story he regenerates into Tome Baker. But more than anything what it does is bring to a close what is, arguably, the longest single-vision run on Doctor Who.

Now I know what you're thinking. Tom Baker was around for longer. So was John Nathan-Turner. But that's not the same. For these five years of Jon Pertwee, the show was guided by the same producer and script editor, overseeing the same Doctor, giving all the stories a similar tone and feel across those five years.

Between Jon Pertwee, Barry Letts, and Terrance Dicks, Doctor Who held a consistent feel throughout the five years of Pertwee. They were based on UNIT, lots of alien invasions, and kept a constant feel of adventures with Pertwee as the leading man of action. With Dicks leaving the show to return to freelance writing at the end of this story, Pertwee moving on to bigger and better things, and with Letts departing after Tom Baker's first story, "Robot", this story becomes not just the end of Pertwee, but for the end of this era of five years of mostly solid stories. And because one of the things I notice about creative types as they go on and hone their craft is that they only seem to niche closer and closer to what they want, this is the most Pertweeian, Dicksian, Lettsian story they ever did.

And really, it's one of the most wonderfully cathartic stories out there.

Because of the way television used to work, Doctor Who was structured very episodically, with each story being a one-and-done serial spread across several episodes. There weren't ongoing plot lines or mysteries. There weren't long story threads to build towards and wrap up, no "Bad Wolf" hints to seed throughout the season with promises of paying off in some big explosive finale. Hell, even the concepts of big explosive finales was barely something the show was starting to play with. All these elements would eventually grow more and more prevalent as you push Doctor Who towards something more and more modern (the 7th Doctor/Ace stuff is the most ready example because, quite frankly, it's the most modern of Doctor Who in every sense of the word), but "Planet of the Spiders" definitely defies that to give us a crazy cathartic trek that seems to capture everything great and weak about the Pertwee era.

The only thing noticeably missing from "Planet of the Spiders" is Roger Delgado's Master, who made an appearance in every story of Pertwee's second season and then recurred throughout the next two years up until "Frontier in Space". The plan, originally, was to bring him back for Pertwee's finale, which would feature a Doctor/Master team-up/adventure in which The Master sacrifices himself to save The Doctor and we find out that The Master is the id to The Doctor's ego and that they are, in fact, the same person just divided into two halves. And, okay. I'm not exactly okay with that. Granted, I'm not a huge fan of Freud, but I'm really kinda glad that they didn't end up with that as the definitive word on The Master. I mean, why does that need to be who The Master is? Why does he need to be tied to The Doctor like that forever? Why can't it just be enough that he's an evil Time Lord from The Doctor's past?

But I'm sidetracking.

Before they could do this, though, Master-actor Roger Delgado died in a car crash in Turkey before they could move on this Master finale and writers Robert Sloman and Barry Letts chucked out what they had and re-wrote an entirely story entirely, focusing on a new villain with different themes and this whole "Id/Ego Master/Doctor" thing is lost to a parallel universe and we don't have to deal with an absurd level of Freudian over-explaining of continuity. And while Delgado was a huge loss, I must admit I'm glad because knowing me and my views on Freud I woulda hated that and (quite frankly) it would have severely weakened the character of The Master.

But alas, "The Planet of the Spiders" is the end of Pertwee and it's a hell of an ending. Not as good as "WarGames," but certainly one of the best final stories a team could ask for.

So let's get to it!

Commentary!:

Part 1:

So I haven’t really done a regeneration story in a while and
the last time we did it it was… well… it was a big one and “Planet of the
Spiders”, while still important, is easily less objectively significant
milestone in Doctor Who history. There are certainly better regeneration
stories and more important ones.

And yet here we are. And right off the bat we’re in the
middle of a story that feels like the beginning of an ending. And I don’t know
what it is. Maybe it’s the fact that we start with a deceptively simply country
scene, with Mike Yates wandering through some road somewhere and with some cows
hanging around. And then we have The Doctor and The Brigadier attending a magic
show of some sort. Or maybe it’s the way we’re pulled into the story slowly,
with the focus up front being deceptively tight and then blossoming out and out
and out as the story increases in scope until it’s nothing short of a gripping
epic.

Or maybe it’s my own particular baggage. I find myself
paying more attention to the opening shots of endings because there’s such a
built-in something or another in them. Maybe it’s because I’m interested in
seeing the way the end of something begins. And it’s really just the first ten
pages or so as they set up all the dominoes that are going to topple over as
the story goes on. For Doctor Who and
an ending story that’s six parts long, you’re gonna be looking at this first
part and seeing what they incorporate. Incorporated here is a lot of little
pieces coming together. There’s the reappearance of Jo in the form of the
package sent to UNIT HQ. And there’s the return of the crystal The Doctor had
given to her, the one that he had stolen from Metebelis 3. There’s psychic impressions
of the Drashigs from The Doctor’s sonic screwdriver, calling back one of the
best action setpiece moments of the entire era.

All of these things add up to the notion that some big ol’
major shit is starting to go down for Pertwee and his era.

But what’s interesting is the way in which this is a Doctor Who story that is trying to do
new things and pushing the story of Doctor
Who in new and varied directions. We get the continued saga of Mike Yates
who has been discharged from UNIT and has now gone rogue as some sort of
freelance investigator guy. We get the mysterious goings on of the Buddhist
house getaway place and whatever magicks they’re conjuring up with their
rhythmic chanting. And we also get some lovely reveal about where The
Brigadier’s watch came from. Sure, it’s vaguely a Jack’s Tattoos moment, or
could be, but Letts and Sloman use it to bring up a various facet of The
Brigadier’s personality or backstory that we previously have not been privy to.

Sure, The Brigadier is embarrassed and we never get more of
it. But what sticks out to me is the notion that all these people are being
separated out and scattered to the winds. After this story The Brigadier and
Benton will scatter to the winds and mostly miss out on whatever The Doctor’s doing
next. Sure, we get some Brigadier stuff later, but those are all things we get
after he’s moved on and retired from the military. The notion that he gets to
go off and be with “Doris” is wonderfully pretty and a nice piece of character
work for a character whose been mostly confined to “I am just this character”
for the past five seasons. Who cares if it’s a slight retcon. It gives The
Brigadier something to fight for. Something to look forward to.

And really, that’s the thing that’s coming for The Doctor,
isn’t it? A reason to fight. Regeneration stories are all about The Doctor
making the ultimate sacrifice and needing a reason to do that. And that’s
strange, isn’t it? He manages to make it out of so many different scrapes and
adventures over the years… what makes this story so special that The Doctor
needs to sacrifice his own life to make it work? I dunno. I’d argue that
watching The Brigadier get personal is one of those things that just seeds
itself in the back of his mind. It’s what he fights for. And he fights for Jo.
And he’ll fight for Sarah Jane and Mike. He’ll fight to fight more, to take out
the Drashigs when no one else can. Because he’s the only guy. He’s The Doctor.

Good thing, too. There’s giant spiders about.

Part 2:

Whenever anyone ever talks about “Planet of the Spiders”
they always discuss three things. The first that’s mentioned is that it’s a
regeneration story. The third we’ll discuss when we hit part four. But the
second is inevitably the fact that the back half of this second episode is
pretty much a nonstop, twelve minute chase sequence.

Okay. Here’s the thing about this chase scene. Yes. It’s a
time waster. Yes. It doesn’t accomplish anything. Yes. The spider coulda
teleported Lupton outta there way before we even got to the cliffhanger. Yes.
The police officer is completely superfluous and unnecessary and he
accomplishes absolutely nothing. Yes. The shortcut doesn’t make sense. Yes. I
have no idea how Lupton managed to run halfway across a landing strip, hop in a
gyrocopter, slap on the helmet (do bad guys care about helmets?), fire up the
copter, and fire up the engine and get the chopper blades moving all without
the police officer, Benton, Sarah Jane, The Doctor, or The Brigadier taking any
sort of notice. Yes. Tons of it doesn’t make a lick of sense.

BUT. To complain about it is to miss the point entirely.

There’s a thing about the Pertwee era that makes it… special
to me. It’s by no means my favorite era, but it's up there. I have to
point out that in terms of sheer funitude you can’t get much better than the
Pertwee era. In no other era is it more obvious that the cares of the creative
types behind the curtain are interested in nothing more than entertaining you
for twenty four minutes at a time. It’s always trying to make you laugh, to
make you feel, to make you have a really good time. And that’s all this is.
It’s designed to be delightful and exciting and charming. And you know what?
They have the room to do it. They have six episodes to burn through. Why not throw
away a twelfth of this story to a chase sequence that’s pretty thrilling and
wildly entertaining?

Sure. If you’re not on board, you’re not on board. But the fact remains that if this isn’t your
cup of tea it’s not meant for you. It’s like complaining that a Smurfs movie
isn’t good (and props to my friend Scott Carelli for pointing it out and
putting it so eloquently).

I love it. I don’t care. I just don’t. You can tell me you
don’t like it and that’s great. But there’s plenty of people who love the
Douglas Adams season and plenty of people who like “The Mutants”. We like
different things. And if this is the story that Pertwee’s going to go out on
and the story that Barry Letts is going to go out on why not go out in the
blaze of glory that covers all the great stuff about the era? The Pertwee era
had tons of these moments and exciting bits and chase sequences and James Bond
madness. The Whomobile? That’s completely insane and doesn’t make a lick of
sense, but to complain is to miss the point. The Whomobile is cool. Who cares?

But even if that’s your complaints or whatever, I have to
say that this story does a good job of introducing a credible threat in the
character of Lupton. Again, because this is a regeneration story and we all
know that going in, there’s a certain level of stakes built into anything and
everything that happens. So when Lupton is running around zapping people it
feels more dangerous than it would in other stories. Watching him sneak into
UNIT HQ and steal the crystal from out under The Doctor’s nose is something…
perverse, to be honest. It’s a violation of an area traditionally safer than
normal places. Sure we did have The Doctor attacked in “Terror of the Autons”
or the organism thing in “The Three Doctors”, but it’s unsettling to see Lupton
just stroll in and attacking everyone he comes across.

Oh, and there’s a spider on his back. Which is unsettling
and creepy in the way that possession stories tend to be. It’s almost
foreshadowing what’s going to happen in the Hinchcliffe/Holmes era, which is
right around the corner. And the notion that there’s a spider on his back is
the same thing Russell T. Davies plays with in “Turn Left” and the horror of
having something there affecting change or what have you… It’s even creepier
and it turns Lupton from just someone vaguely dangerous into a truly creepy
character and our connection to the larger promise of “spiders” as hinted at by
the title of the story. That he wants the blue crystal hints at something even
larger and more nefarious and ties both stories together.

Again, we’re just getting started.

Part 3:

One of the things I love about this story is how absolutely
Pertwee it is. I mean, with lots of writing input from Barry Letts and with
direction by Barry Letts that’s not to be unexpected.

As the entire era was script edited by Terrance Dicks, it’s
worth mentioning that Dicks’s villains are almost always unequivocably black
and white. Sloman highlights this in one scene in the monastery where Lupton
talks about his influences and where he came from and says that he’s a genius
awesome salesman person who was outsted from his firm, found himself out on the
street, and sought refuge at this Buddhist retreat in the country. Here, he
sought to regroup. But also power. And from here he will take over his old
firm, the country, and then the world! Mwahaha.

And then we get a nice quip from his assistant, who says “I
came here just to look for peace of mind.”

It’s deliciously comedic and deeply sardonic. It’s a
critique of the notion that every single story has to be universe shatteringly
massive and everything needs to be about time collapsing or Earth falling to
the Daleks or The Master preparing to go out on a universe conquering mission
to establish a six trillion year reign. I mean, why the hell did a guy go to a
rural Buddhist meditation center in an effort to take over the world? It’s
just… it’s crazy and insane. And if you’re going to go anywhere, why Buddhism?
I mean, people go to Buddhism because they want to center themselves and because
they’re casting off the burdens of society. It’s just… it’s the most insanely
insane thing I think I’ve ever seen.

That’s okay, though. Because Lupton’s in way over his head.
Just like The Doctor, which is what’s interesting about this episode… Because
at the end of this episode The Doctor finds himself back on Metebilis 3. Ruh
roh.

And this is where the story kinda frays for people. Once the
story hits Metebilis 3 it becomes wheel-spinny and padded in the way only
Pertwee stories ever are. I’m not sure if that’s accurate yet, though. Yes, not
much is accomplished on Metebilis 3 in this episode. But it’s hardly a bad
time, methinks. To the contrary, it’s well-constructed to the point that it’s
impossibly disorienting. All of a sudden we’re slammed onto this entirely alien
planet where we don’t know the rules or the mythology or anything. We get it in
places. But we’re just trying to keep up at this point. And to be honest,
that’s a good place to be. It’s better to have an audience engaged and attempting
to make sense of what’s happening than have them bored out of their minds or
predicting where the story’s going.

Amidst all this is more great Pertwee. Watching Sarah Jane
get lost is one of the most thrilling and exciting CSO transitions I’ve seen on
the show. Likewise watching Pertwee kick some ass on Metebilis 3 is really
great stuff and a wonderful last hurrah for Venusian Akido.

Part 4:

So I could attack this episode for being an episode in which
The Doctor is removed from the plot for no reason. But why do that? What’s the
point?

No, instead, it gives Sarah Jane the opportunity to be awesome
and get captured and offered up as steak to the Eight Legs. So it’s… you know…
Pertwee as usual.

But that’s okay, because if we’re going to send out, why not
go out with all the tropes? I mean, that’s what I’ve been saying. And yeah, the
episode ends with The Doctor and Sarah both in Eight Legs custody so it’s
basically exactly what you’d expect from a Pertwee story, but not in a bad way.
There’s plenty of moments that really work, such as the Sarah Jane turns around
and comes face to face with Lupton, which is a great creep out moment that
paints him in a very sinister light, but in the best of ways.

That said, Lupton is not what’s interesting here. I’d argue
that he pales in comparison to the eponymous Spiders (sorry, Eight Legs) and
him sitting on the Spider-Dais is quite… hilarious. But he’s not what’s
interesting.

What’s interesting in this story is the Eight Legs. The
Eight Legs, if you haven’t guessed, are the eponymous spiders of the story, the
bad guy monsters if you will. And honestly, they’re an element of the story that
never fails to disappoint me. For one, the title “Planet of the Spiders” is an
absolutely drop dead sexy title. It feels impossibly ominous before you even
get into the idea that this is the Third Doctor’s regeneration story. “Spiders”
as a word is impossibly specific and sounds like a final destination and it
turns seemingly innocuous creatures (most spiders are harmless and just want to
kill icky insects) into terrifying bad guys. I mean, do you want to go up
against spiders that big? I know I don’t.

And they’re terrifying despite the fact that they’re clearly
rubber spiders who sit around on these five foot tall daises, which is…
tremendously silly and shows you the level to which Doctor Who just didn’t really have a budget around this time…

If there’s one way the spiders are lacking, it’s in their
mythology. If it were me, the spiders would have been brought to Metebilis 3 by
the TARDIS back in "The Green Death” and would have wandered out while The
Doctor was undergoing that madness. This is my wish because of what happens in
subsequent parts. Instead Sloman writes that they were brought over by the
human colonists and escaped from the spaceship after it landed on the planet.
The spiders moved into the caves and were changed by the blue crystals, which
turned them giant and gave them power over the Two Legs (as they called
humans). It’s a choice that pretends to build texture into the world, but I don’t
see why the spiders either couldn’t have always been on Metebilis 3 to begin
with, or you have them be a product of The Doctor’s journey, making him partly
responsible for everything that’s happened. Thematically, mine is better.

Ah well.

We also get an interesting development with the crystal, in
which previously undiscussed character Tommy has his mind opened by the crystal
and it seemingly cures him of his (poorly choiced) mental retardation. Before he
was a poorly represented disenfranchised individual, and now he’s reading
William Blake. What I like about this is the way the story represents the
concept and then explains it later. We see the crystal affect Tommy’s mind, and
then we see its effects, and then we get an explanation about what the crystal
does later and how that enhanced the spiders. It’s not even shoehorned either,
because it’s used to describe the spiders, but it also reflects back on what we
saw with Tommy just a few minutes earlier.

It’s good story telling that doesn’t rely on hand holding is
what I’m saying. So… that.

Part 5:

So after two episodes in which not a hell of a lot happens
we suddenly get an episode where everything starts happening at once.

To be honest, this is the way the story should play it. If
you’re going to pad a story somewhere, it’s best in the middle where it’s
mostly forgettable. Best leave the audience with some rousing adventures and fast
paced towards the end. Why? Because my god. Here I am in episode five and I’m
wondering why the hell I ever even doubted this story. Sure, it’s been a good
time, but there’s very little to discuss in episode four. No. This has
everything. A Queen Spider plot, the threat of the Great One, and a mini Spider
invasion.

And the fact that we have all these plots colliding at once
is one of the best things about this story. It gives the story a mad sense of
pace as all three storylines of the plot all meet up at the end of this episode
to give one of my favorite Doctor Who
cliffhangers.

Some of this is down to Tommy’s heroic moment of badassery. Tommy
is the character who we cared about because he was… shall we say
disenfranchised. And here he is at the end of this episode: a man full of
promise and understanding and inner peace. It’s a Han Solo moment except
without being earned. Tommy didn’t really “earn” his intelligence. He was plot
contrivanced into it, with the only reason for him getting this gift is because
of his childlike wonderment and good heart. So it’s not really… earned, I don’t
think. But it is that moment where the story component you had previously
disregarded because it was disregardable comes back and turns into a key
lynchpin moment of the story in a truly satisfying way.

It’s also a great payoff to the goings on at the Buddhist
meditation center. What had previously seemed incongruous and parallel is
thrust into the narrative as Lupton’s followers summon spiders and get
possessed, now running around the center with spiders on their backs.

And then there’s the question of Sarah Jane and how… weird
that whole thing is. It’s weird that Sarah Jane wound up back in the web room
after she had that discussion of the Queen. It’s also strange how eager and
rushy she is with everything else. To the untrained eye she’s just bubbly Sarah
Jane, but… she isn’t is she? She can’t be? I mean, not to spoil, but it’s true
that she’s a little bit off and not everything seems wonderful. And it’s weird
how the Queen was the last person to talk to her. And the Queen… I’m not
entirely sure we should trust her, what do you think?

But the super-secret hero of this story is easily Jon
Pertwee. After two episodes of wheel-spinning he’s back in a big bad way.

One of the things that strikes me about regeneration stories
is how they bring out the best in every single actor who’s playing The Doctor.
More than not, the final story for a particular Doctor (when they know it’s a
regeneration) is really a banner story for that actor. “The War Games” is
easily Troughton’s best story. No one argues about Davison and “Caves”. And
here we have Pertwee giving the best performance of his era in the one scene
between him and The Great One. Truly, it is outstanding to watch. It’s baffling
to see The Doctor tricked so completely, especially this Doctor. Between
Pertwee and Tom Baker, you had almost twelve years of The Doctor as impossibly
infallible.

Yet here at the end we have one of the most terrifying,
heartbreaking things to ever befall the 3rd Doctor.

The 3rd Doctor was always an outsider, a rebel, a
fighter. He was stuck at UNIT during this incarnation and while he was there he
never became a full military man. He was never a cog in the machine. He always
worked with them but with his own flair of Time Lordiness. This is the guy who
broke military protocol to save the Silurians and disobeyed direct orders in order
to stop Project Golden Age. He was always his own man. Even the one moment it
seems like he went out and teamed with the bad guy he was always on the side of
the right. He’s a champion of justice in the world. To use alignment rules: he
was Lawful Neutral.

So imagine the horror when the Great One makes him walk.
Walk, Doctor, walk.

And Pertwee nails it. He does with that exactly what he
needs to. He is scared. Scared beyond anything you could possibly imagine. It’s
beyond anything you could possibly conceptualize this Doctor being. He’s always
in command. He’s always in charge. Unflappable. I mean have you seen his suits?
And have you seen the way he eats because, quite simply, he doesn’t give a
frak? I mean, that’s his thing, and now they have stripped him of his most
defining characteristic. It’s a complete violation of The Doctor in every sense
of the word.

So he flees. He runs. He runs all the way back to the Buddhist
retreat and into the arms of his old mentor, K’Anpo Rimpoche, the abbot of the
monastery.

Leaving us here is genius. It’s the final hurrah of the
Pertwee era and what we have coming next is his final blaze of glory. All he
needs is a pep talk, which he hurriedly gets while under the gun from The Great
One, in the same room as the Queen Spider, and with four other spiders firing psychokinetic
blasts just on the other side of the door. Come on, Doctor. Hurry, hurry. And
yet please do not. I am not ready to say good bye to you yet.

And yet we must. Here we go.

Part 6:

Damn. Gets me every time.

Jon Pertwee is one of those Doctors who never really stands
out to me as “one of the best Doctors ever.” And yeah. That statement is not
really that fair at all. I’m of the opinion that there has been no bad Doctors
in the history of the show. We’re talking officially sanctioned Doctors, I
mean. So the eleven who have been The Doctor have all been excellent in their
own particular way. It just becomes picking out which one speaks to you most.
And most of the reason I love Pertwee is because of his swagger and his
confidence and his demure. It’s clear that Pertwee only ever really played
himself when he played The Doctor. Hell, he even admitted as much. And love of
the 3rd Doctor is really all about whether or not you connect with
Pertwee as a person because his Doctor is essentially him.

And that’s why the last five minutes of this is about the
most heartwrenching regeneration you get when you look at all the regenerations
of the Classic Series.

Now that’s dour, but look at it. That’s what we’re watching.
And I have to applaud any older actor who really goes for the dramatic realism
of their character going through a traumatic process involving their old age because
it’s a real acceptance of mortality for a character who might not be so far from
it either. It’s no mistake that Pertwee looks impossibly old in this story, and
seeing him embrace that age and really go for it is really off-putting. It’s
like watching John Spencer have a massive heart attack in West Wing’s “The
Birnam Wood”, especially given that Spencer died of a heart attack less than
fourteen months after the airing of that episode.

But here we have The Doctor stumbling out of the TARDIS,
having made the ultimate sacrifice, having faced his fears, and coming through
it a changed man. It’s… beautiful.

And Pertwee really kills the scene. There’s a reason the
scene has made me cry every single time I watch it. It’s hard to watch, and it’s
hard to watch Sarah Jane deal with the fact that The Doctor is regenerating (or
dying, really. She’s never been through this before). And it’s hard to watch
The Doctor ask K’Anpo Rimpoche if this is the only way it can go down and K’Anpo
tells him it is so. It’s powerful to watching him stand up, swallow his pride
and his fear, and demand that K’Anpo give him the crystal so he can get going.
It’s just… it’s his “and I’m not going to let you stop me now moment” but much
more internalized and less bombastic.

How he dies is more complicated, as his cells are
essentially fried by the intelligence matrix The Great One plans to use to
disseminate her intelligence across the cosmos in her attempt to take over the
universe.

Yet for all this scope, the story feels remarkably contained
and personal. Perhaps it’s because we know The Doctor is going to win, or
because it’s really about The Doctor facing off against a true glutton of
knowledge. It really does feel intensely personal despite everything. Hell,
even the way The Doctor goes into the TARDIS once he’s defeated The Great One
and how he’s stuck in the time vortex but the TARDIS brings him back to UNIT HQ
is kinda… insane. I know that it’s probably just some time displacement that makes
him come back to UNIT some three weeks after the fact, but in my interpretation
of events, he was spinning out of control for an indeterminate amount of time
before being dragged back to Earth.

And even though it’s crushing to watch this Doctor start to
regenerate, there’s an inherent victory in it. He’s pleased with himself. He
did good work. And The Brigadier’s classic “Here we go again” is a wonderful
reminder that we’re about to go into some Tom Baker and that wonderfulness.

It helps. And a wonderful promise for where the show is
going next.

Final Thoughts?: "Planet of the Spiders" is considered one of the all time great regeneration stories. In case you hadn't guessed, I love it to pieces.

Sure, I'll admit it's not without its faults. It's terribly padded in the middle and removing Pertwee from the action for half an episode and using the other half to get him back into the plot is not economical, but this story is more than that.

No, it's a wonderful send off and one of the best send offs for any era of Doctor Who. It helps that this story has just about everything you could possibly want from a Pertwee story (the only thing that's missing is The Master and given how that could have turned out I must admit that's probably a good thing) and it really is a cracking good tale, rife with Buddhist ideals and concepts and wonderful set pieces and a fantastic, iconic villain that makes for an excellent, creepy adversary for a final Doctor tale.

But it's also a wonderful story about knowledge and the burdens that come from it.

One of the things that I'm not quite sure this story sells with is the notion that The Doctor is greedy for knowledge. To borrow a phrase, it's akin to watching "Planet of Fire" and seeing a massive payoff for things that weren't set off. The Doctor, in a lot of ways, is always seeking to better himself, to learn about different cultures and different places and times and history, so in that it works. But at the same time, I'm not entirely sure it works with Pertwee's Doctor. No. Pertwee's Doctor was always too aloof and self-assured to fall victim to the things that this story's attempting to indict him for, and no amount of telling with convince me that The 3rd Doctor's ultimate downfall was a rampaging quest for knowledge and theft of some sacred texts. The blue crystal was an innocent steal. How was he to know?

I'd actually argue that The 3rd Doctor's ultimate downfall is his unflappability, or rather his awareness of his unflappability and the way he was always right at every single turn.

Because then what we're left with in this story is the fact that The Doctor has vastly underestimated his enemy and that is his undoing. How many times have we seen this Doctor make a mistake? How many times has he slipped up and admitted he was wrong? It's here that we see him recklessly running into situations and getting in way over his head. He should have made less assumptions and taken the lesson in humility, especially given the terms of his previous regeneration. Cast down to Earth and confined there in exile? That's pretty damn humbling if you ask me. I mean, wasn't that the whole point of his exile? To tell him that The Doctor was getting restless and to punish him for it?

That means that now he is allowed to move on and cast aside this... shame, as it were. It's no mistake that Pertwee's Doctor was unflappable. But giving him a story that proves his faults and demonstrates the ways in which he could mess up, The Doctor is finally given closure and given free reign to move on with his life and leave Earth behind. And it's a wonderful catharsis for his Doctor, almost knowing that this ultimate sacrifice is the best possible thing he could have done for himself. He has fulfilled the promise of his premise. He has saved the universe by meddling properly and for his hard work and his service he gets to cast off his whole body and begin a life anew, ready to run out into the stars and becoming the traveling wanderer we all know and love as The 4th Doctor.

But seeing him on the floor at the end, watching Jon Pertwee die, we understand that this Doctor was a wonderful, wonderful Doctor and the fight that he fought and the era he was in and the things he stood for were all fantastic things that were truly entertaining and truly wonderful. It's hard because we had some god damn rocking good times filled with chase sequences, captures, food, padding, and tearful, heartbreaking farewells. It's good that we got all of that one more time in this one big epic finale, a final sendoff to a great five years of television and one of the most underrated Doctors who ever was.

Next Time!: 6th Doctor! Owl slugs! Strangling! A dilemma! Twins! And a whole massive cluster fuck of bad decisions! We always follow up a regeneration story with a post regeneration and like it or not, we're gonna talk about "The Twin Dilemma"! Coming Next Tuesday!

2 comments:

"And there’s the return of the crystal The Doctor had given to her, the one that he had stolen from Metebelis 3"

Gah! You fall into the story's trap in swallowing that bull! In what way did he 'steal' the crystal from the uninhabitted primeval Metebelis III? That's why I loathe this stupid story- the whole rationale behind the Doctor's actions is false! facing fears he never before displayed to return a crystal that he never really stole by confronting the spider with an idiotic plan that would've killed him AND destroyed the universe if the spider hadn't destroyed itself!

Ah you've got some great points in here. I really love this ep too in spite of the LOOOOOONNNNNGGGG chase scene. Which isn't so bad if you stop the video part way, go make dinner and then come back and finish. Because it's great fun but too much to bear in one sitting.

As far as "stealing" the crystal, since I'm Native American I can relate to the idea of someone digging around in sacred sites being called stealing. You're not supposed to chop down trees when you go into the Redwoods National Forest. You respect the land. The Doctor stole a pretty crystal to impress a pretty girl and we all know how THAT went.

About The Blog...

I'm a recentish Doctor Who fan (Summer 2008, really) who loves experiencing and discussing Doctor Who. From its triumphs to its flaws to its high points to its lows, we talk about it all and nothing is not fair game.

This blog discusses all the Doctors from Hartnell to McGann, covering all The Doctor Who stories from the classic run on television. Other people focus on the directing and the music and the performances, but my focus (because I work in television) is on the actual production, writing, and construction of these stories and you can find all of our entries via the index at the top of the blog.

You can also check out "The Doctor's Companion", a weekly audio podcast where my co-host Scott and I talk about all of Doctor Who. It's like this but a bit more casual and with tons of fun. You can subscribe to it in iTunes or download the shows directly and leave comments here.

It's a celebration of the best science fiction show of all time, a show we all know and love!